I saw the original Mortal Kombat film in theaters about 100 years ago, give or take, and it was bad but also really good. It was the '90s and I was going through kind of a Christopher Lambert phase (if you ever have the chance to see The Hunted, I highly recommend it), and it's also possible that I may have been mildly hammered. But the film itself has an underlying earnestness, and some really good choreography, that elevates it above the cheese line and into the realm of Legitimately Good Videogame Movie. (Plus there's that guy who yells "Mortal Kombat!" That guy rocked.)

I bring all this up because the trailer for Mortal Kombat 2—the one with Karl Urban as Johnny Cage—is here, and, well, I can't say it fills me with confidence. Maybe it's not fair to be overly critical of the dialog in a New Line Cinema flick about some interdimensional Kumite, but lines like "How are you doing that?" and "It's time to become the hero you were meant to be" clang like they were written by George Lucas.

What little there is to see of the fights don't strike me as all that exciting either: There's not much revealed in the way of superpowered pugilism at this point, no, and maybe I've been spoiled by the games, but the direct-to-DVD-caliber CGI fatality at the end of the clip leaves me flat. It's also odd that the protagonist of the 2021 flick, who wasn't in any of the games, has seemingly been reduced to a bit player in the sequel without a single line in the trailer.

The X-factor here is, of course, Karl Urban. Has he ever been in a bad movie? Well, yes, quite a few of them in fact. But he's always the best part of them, too, and no matter what else is going on there's always a chance he'll pull it out of the fire. Remember Pathfinder? Not great! Yet somehow, awesome.

It's also possible that I'm being too much of a Doubting Thomas here, because the reaction to the trailer on YouTube is enormously positive—and open-eyed about how it's likely to work out.

(Image credit: lilstewpid (YouTube))

We'll find out in a few months: Mortal Kombat 2 debuts in theaters on October 24.

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OpenAI launched ChatGPT Agent on Thursday, its latest effort in the industry-wide pursuit to turn AI into a profitable enterprise—not just one that eats investors' billions. In its announcement blog, OpenAI says its Agent "can now do work for you using its own computer," but CEO Sam Altman warns that the rollout presents unpredictable risks.

AI agents are machine learning tools intended to perform complex, multi-step tasks, and they've been the latest landmark in the AI arms race for competitors like Google and Microsoft. In prerelease demos for Wired and The Verge, OpenAI presenters used ChatGPT Agent to automate calendar planning and creating financial presentations.

(Image credit: hapabapa via Getty Images)

By blending its earlier Operator and deep research agentic models, OpenAI says Agent can perform "complex tasks from start to finish." According to OpenAI spokespeople, those tasks typically take Agent 10 or 15 minutes, while more complicated assignments take the tool longer to complete.

OpenAI research lead Lisa Fulford told Wired that she used Agent to order "a lot of cupcakes," which took the tool about an hour, because she was very specific about the cupcakes.

"It was easier than me doing it myself," Fulford said, "because I didn't want to do it."

While the potential cupcake timesavings alone are functionally infinite, Altman took to X today to warn that using Agent could present some considerable dangers—the extent of which OpenAI is apparently content to let its users figure out.

"I would explain this to my own family as cutting edge and experimental; a chance to try the future," Altman said, "but not something I’d yet use for high-stakes uses or with a lot of personal information until we have a chance to study and improve it in the wild."

Today we launched a new product called ChatGPT Agent.Agent represents a new level of capability for AI systems and can accomplish some remarkable, complex tasks for you using its own computer. It combines the spirit of Deep Research and Operator, but is more powerful than that…July 17, 2025

Inspiring the opposite of confidence, Altman said that "bad actors may try to 'trick' users' AI agents into giving private information they shouldn't and take actions they shouldn't, in ways we can't predict." I'm not sure what utility putting those quote marks around "trick" in his X post provides, but I'm admittedly not a tech visionary.

Altman said giving Agent more than "the minimum access required" or giving it a carte blanche license to answer all your emails no questions asked could expose vulnerabilities for malicious actors to exploit. To mitigate those hazards, Altman said OpenAI has "built a lot of safeguards and warnings," but notes that the company "can't anticipate everything."

"In the spirit of iterative deployment, we are going to warn users heavily and give users freedom to take actions carefully if they want to," Altman said.

Personally, I would encourage any interested users to want to. Just a few weeks ago, the CEO of encrypted messaging app Signal warned about the security risks of 'agentic' AI and how much personal data they'll require access to. "There's no model to do that encrypted," Meredith Whittaker said in an interview at SXSW.

Worth a watch:Head of Signal, Meredith Whittaker, on so-called "agentic AI" and the difference between how it's described in the marketing and what access and control it would actually require to work as advertised.

— @keithfitzgerald.bsky.social (@keithfitzgerald.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2025-07-17T21:45:54.414Z

"There's a profound issue with security and privacy that is haunting this sort of hype around agents, and that is ultimately threatening to break the blood-brain barrier between the application layer and the OS player by conjoining all these separate services, muddying their data," Whittaker continued. "Because hey, the agent's got to get in, text your friends, pull the data out of your texts and summarize that so that your brain can sit in a jar and you're not doing any of that yourself."

OpenAI says Agent is trained to require permission before "taking actions with real-world consequences, like making a purchase"—which is good to know, but I can't help but wonder how narrow the definition of "real-world consequences" is there. Are there real-world consequences if Agent plans a shitty date itinerary?

Likewise, certain "critical tasks" like sending emails will require the user to actively supervise Agent's work. It's also trained to refuse potentially catastrophic tasks like bank transfers or other financial activities.

OpenAI also makes sure to note that it doesn't "have definitive evidence that the model could meaningfully help a novice create severe biological harm." So, you know. That's good.

ChatGPT Agent is available now for Pro users, while Plus and Team users will receive access in the next few days. I'm sure it'll be fine.

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An Italian YouTuber who specializes in retro gaming says he's facing criminal charges and a possible jail sentence as a result of reviewing retro gaming consoles on his channel, some of which came with pre-loaded ROMs.

Francesco Salicini, who streams as Once Were Nerd, said in a video posted on July 14 (via Android Authority) that the ordeal began on April 15 when Italy's Guardia di Finanza, a law enforcement agency that focuses on financial crimes, showed up at his mother's house with a search warrant.

Believing he'd done nothing wrong, Salicini opted to fully cooperate on the spot: He invited the police to his studio, where they seized more than 30 consoles, along with his mobile phone, which they held for more than a month.

Salicini said in his machine-translated video that he's accused of violating article 171 of Italy's copyright law, which he believes is because some of the consoles he reviews on his channel ship with microSD cards filled with games. In a GoFundMe page (Google translated) raising money for his legal defense, Salicini said the problem appears to be his "sponsorship" of those consoles—presumably a reference to sponsored promotional reviews.

"While I've always insisted that these consoles can only be used if you have, as I do, the original copy of the game, and that they're also available for sale on Amazon, eBay, and various other stores, I've never 'sponsored' them, but rather 'reviewed' them with the utmost objectivity, citing both the pros and cons of each device," Salicini wrote.

Salicini isn't entirely certain of what he did to violate the law, he explained, because police aren't required to inform him of specific charges until after the investigation is completed. But the potential penalties are stiff: Article 171 of Italy's copyright law allows for prison terms of between six months and three years, however, and—because the statute was written in 1941—a fine of up to 30 million lira, which works out to a little over €15,000.

For now, Salicini's YouTube channel, with more than 220 videos, remains available; he said in his GoFundMe that the Guardia di Finanza has "blocked" his social media channels, although his Instagram and Discord are still up. While it's possible the charges against him will ultimately be dismissed after the investigation is concluded, he said in his GoFundMe that he expects it will ultimately go to trial—and yes, he now has a lawyer. I've reached out to ask for comment and will update if I receive a reply.

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Gabe Newell, the co-founder of Valve Corporation and the driving force behind much of the company's unique philosophy, recently gave an interview to YouTuber Zalkar Saliev, a channel that's more business-focused than games but, hey, this is Gaben. The full interview is yet to surface but a few shorts from the conversation have been released, including one about Newell's daily routine ("get up, work, go scuba diving").

Yeah yeah: easy enough when you're a billionaire with a fleet of superyachts. But the reason Newell is a billionaire with a fleet of superyachts is Valve, or to be more precise Steam: the de facto PC distribution platform that takes a 30% cut on nearly all sales. These days it is of course a very different company from the one that launched Half-Life 2 alongside Steam, but is one of the most spectacularly successful businesses in the world while remaining privately owned: the profit-per-employee makes Apple and Facebook look like lemonade stands.

During the interview with Saliev, Newell is asked what advice he'd give to people starting businesses: fairly boilerplate perhaps, but Newell's answer is essentially to ignore the entire model that Silicon Valley has been built on.

"I see a lot of people that go into situations thinking that what they need is a pitch document to VCs to raise capital," says Newell, "and that's a deeply distracted beginning to an organisation. If you're creating value for people the capital will come your way. Probably at a reduced cost than it would be otherwise.

"Having a big bunch of capital and then saying 'Oh, I guess all those lies we told in our pitch doc, now we have to go and, you know, hire a whole bunch of people to be on this trajectory', I think that's a great way of destroying a bunch of money and wasting a bunch of peoples' time."

And just like that, 99% of tech startups are explained. But it feels more widely applicable too, especially at a time when Microsoft is boasting about being in a stronger position than it's ever been while subjecting its workforce to periodic bloodbaths. Newell's summation will be familiar to any Valve-watcher, but some things do bear repetition.

"The key is to ignore all the distractions around [a business]," says Newell, "and just focus on 'how do we make our customers happier', right? If you listen to your customers and focus on them it's ridiculously easier to build a business. But the focus should always be on your customers, and on your partners, and on your employees. And then everything else will fall into place over time."

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Remember Ubisoft's live-action Assassin's Creed TV series that it's been cooking up over at Netflix? No? Well, don't beat yourself up about it; I'm pretty sure Ubi's forgotten once or twice too. The studio was first chatting about its grand plans to make an AC TV show in 2017, in the afterglow of the (not very good) Michael Fassbender-led AC film.

Then all went quiet, save some burblings about an anime, until 2020. In the thick of Covid, one Guillemot or another bolted up in bed and remembered that they were supposed to be making an AC series. So we got an incredibly brief, 10-second teaser and, well, that was it. Then, three years later, it lost its showrunner.

So not going great, all round. Nevertheless, Variety reports that—after these long birth pangs—the series is officially moving ahead. The project has queued up Roberto Patino and David Wiener as showrunners and executive producers.

If those names don't ring any bells: Patino was a producer on Westworld and Sons of Anarchy, and—slightly less glamorously—creator of HBO Max's DMZ, which got lukewarm reviews. Wiener, meanwhile, was showrunner for season 2 of Paramount's Halo show—the one where Master Chief had sex.

Will John Assassin's Creed also have sex? Yes. No, really. A joint statement from Wiener and Patino described the series thusly: "It is about power and violence and sex and greed and vengeance." Which is news to me. I thought it was about clearing icons off an enormous map while your brain played elevator music.

It's not all about those baser impulses, mind you. "More than anything," say Patino and Wiener, "this is a show about the value of human connection, across cultures, across time. And it’s about what we stand to lose as a species, when those connections break." It's possible they've got the games mixed up with Death Stranding, now that I take a look at it.

I gotta be honest, my hopes are low for this one. It's your author's humble opinion that the Assassin's Creed series has long since spiralled into total, unparseable meaninglessness, and that Ubi would be well-served to wipe the whole slate clean and hit reset on the entire thing. I suspect it will not, and I also suspect this series will do its damndest to make us care about the Isu and the Pieces of Eden and what-have-you. That is, if it appears at all, and five years from now I'm not writing a news story that goes 'remember that Assassin's Creed show they announced five years ago? It's just been greenlit at Neo-Netflix.'

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Gabe Newell, the co-founder of Valve Corporation and the driving force behind much of the company's unique philosophy, has had a much less public-facing role in recent years. Newell still turns up for things like the Steam Deck launch and official documentaries, but much of his time now is spent on one of his (several) superyachts, and on his other companies' projects: He co-founded Starfish Neuroscience, a company focused on neural interfaces (popularly known as "brain chips"), and Inkfish, a marine research operation.

Newell also remains magnificently quixotic, popping up every so often to talk about things like when a shark went for him, and now he's re-surfaced to do an interview with a YouTube channel that has 19 subscribers (Valve confirmed to PCG that the interview is legit). Zalkar Saliev "shares powerful interviews and lifestyle stories with successful men across the US," and his channel has previously played host to employees of Amazon and Microsoft. And now Gabe Newell's on there: well, some short clips are on there, with a full interview to follow later.

The ocean-loving billionaire is asked, "What is the daily routine for Mr Gabe?" I'd hesitate to call Newell "Gaben" to his face so Mr Gabe is quite the framing.

"My daily routine," begins Newell, "I get up, I work, I go scuba-diving, work some more, [then] either go on a second scuba dive or I go to the gym and work out. I live on a boat so I just hang out with everybody on the boat. Then I work.

"I work seven days a week: I'm working from my bedroom as you can tell. I like working, it's fun, to me it doesn't feel like work. The kinds of things that I get to do every day are super-awesome."

Indeed, we can see from the clip, which alternates between Saliev's Macbook view and the camera feed, that Newell appears to be sitting on the end of his bed. The view makes it impossible to say for certain, but the IRL Saxton Hale is looking good for his age and more trim generally: clearly all the scuba-diving and gym-going has paid-off. Newell goes on to say that he's effectively retired, inasmuch as he only does stuff that interests him now, but the man's work ethic is clearly second-to-none.

"I've said it before but, when you retire, you want to like stop doing your horrible job and go do what is sort of most fun and entertaining," says Newell. "In that sense I've been retired for a long time.

"In one of the companies we're working on an aerosol pathogen detection device so you can see all the pathogens that are in the air. Brain-computer interfaces are incredibly cool and all of the associated neuroscience is incredibly cool."

The upshot? Talk about life goals: "I just work all the time," ends Newell. "But it's not like 'oh my god I'm up late at night slaving away on stuff.' It's more like 'I can't go to sleep because I'm having fun', you know?"

Expect more to come from this interview, even if Newell's current interests have moved (somewhat) away from pc gaming. Newell's spectacular success and unusual perspectives have created an intense cult of personality around the man's pronouncements, but as the above shows some of it is really quite simple. As a Valve exec once observed, Newell's real superpower is in how he "delighted in people on the team just being really good at what they did."

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Need to know

What is it? A point 'n' click "pulp adventure thriller" with true grit.Release date July 18, 2025Expect to pay TBCDeveloper Powerhoof, Dave LloydPublisher PowerhoofReviewed on RTX 3060 (laptop), Ryzen 5 5600H, 16GB RAMSteam Deck Officially "unknown", but it runs brilliantlyLink Steam

We meet Mick Carter as a homeless drifter. Due to some unspecified past trauma, he’s abandoned his settled domestic life in a nameless Australian city for a self-flagellating transient existence. He’s en route to home, where he’s been beckoned to attend his mother’s funeral. He does so reluctantly, because it draws him closer to a past he’s deliberately abandoned.

Shit hits the fan immediately. Not only is Mick forcibly ejected from his train carriage by a mysterious, possibly supernatural presence, but he’s then framed for the murder of a homeless man in the seedy railway underpass he finds himself in. At first, The Drifter promises to be a dark character study wrapped in a murder mystery, but it proves to be more—alas, to its detriment.

The Drifter bills itself as a “pulp adventure thriller” and it wastes no time living up to that descriptor. Carter is a depressive but nevertheless oddly calm protagonist, with a familiar—if somewhat antiquated—Australian matter-of-factness about him. He’s downcast, but not entirely ruined. In fact, when a hi-tech conspiracy begins to loom he proves quite resourceful: The Drifter’s point-and-click trappings generally demand MacGyver-like logic, which is to say, an ability to use mundane objects to solve seemingly insurmountable problems.

But The Drifter has quieter, ostensibly more complex ambitions. At first the world presents as a richly down-at-heel urban sprawl. Its lavishly illustrated environs are a potent combination of John Carpenter blight (think They Live, Escape From New York) with film noir tactics. Powerhoof's pixel art strives towards a painterly, oddly curvaceous semi-realism, darkness and undulating shadows rendering a bleak and forbidding world that still manages to be tastefully colourful and varied. The way Powerhoof frames many of The Drifter’s exterior urban expanses within impermeable darkness lend them the mood of fascinating, sickly dioramas.

The studio has a distinctive approach to pixel art, which is no small feat. It doesn’t rely on the innate charm of the style; it has a certain wobbly, slightly surreal exaggeration to it. This is a very different game from Crawl, but it’s immediately obvious that it comes from the same team.

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(Image credit: Powerhoof)

The Drifter is a joy to behold and interact with. The studio’s approach to urban noir is more traditional compared to the haunted modern listlessness of Norco's flyover suburbia, for example, but despite the familiarity of a seedy train underpass, or the offices of a dubious tabloid, or a skyline-lit nighttime graveyard, there’s something forbiddingly melancholy about the opening hours. It’s magnetically downcast. But the places I visit vary widely as the story progresses, and the oppressive, noir-ish melancholy flounders as the story moves on.

The point-and-click elements are familiar. Puzzles tend to boil down to executing actions in the right order, combining found objects to make a jury-rigged tool, or compelling certain events to occur to accommodate my objectives. Powerhoof has devised a clever user interface that takes a lot of the tedious guesswork out while also providing ample information about present circumstances, lest one lose (or forget from one session to the next) their way. Lateral thinking is still the order of the day—of course you'd use a small metal tag, retrieved from a bowl, to unscrew a vent!—though problem-solving is generally conducted linearly: there’s no way to be more clever than the prescribed sequence of interactions.

Which is fine, because The Drifter is proud to be a point-and-click adventure; it’s not messing with a format it clearly adores. If anything, it only wants to make it less obtuse and more welcoming.

Best of the best

(Image credit: Larian Studios)

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The Drifter is a finely wrought point ‘n’ click adventure on a mechanical level, with gorgeous art—and the latter cannot be over-emphasised—but its pulp tendencies sit a bit askew from some of its more severe themes. The devastating source of Carter’s jiltedness rubs awkwardly against the high concept sci-fi narrative, which of course involves time travel, albeit towards bleaker ends than the usual “just one more chance” fantasy. Whereas some might want to revisit the past to make good on some otherwise irrevocable failure or shortcoming, Carter just wants to forget his past; he doesn’t want to optimize, he wants to erase, all the better to negate the pain he’s failed to live with.

It’s a refreshingly ruthless, refreshingly human, framing of regret, but as The Drifter moves into labyrinthine sci-fi territory, and as its strands coil around a conspiracy much larger than Carter’s circumstances, the game loses sight of the emotional stakes in favour of the procedural unfolding of wily mad scientist baloney. As the story progressed, I felt more and more remote from Mick Carter.

To Powerhoof’s credit—and there’s a genuine ambition here—this partial failure has a lot to do with the limitations of genre conventions; within the strictures of a loosely side-scrolling and panned out presentation, the subtleties other mediums could use to squeeze feeling out of Carter—expressions, posture etcetera—aren't available. Once we’ve left the forbidding, narrowed-in cityscapes in favour of more outlandish “pulpish” environs there are fewer opportunities to feel as if we’re commandeering a genuinely shaken character; Carter turns into a fish-out-of-water problem solving avatar with depressive posture. Under these circumstances the emotional impact of his plight is blunted. As a sci-fi thriller, The Drifter is rote.

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There’s also the weird tonal inconsistency of the supporting characters, such as Hara, a strangely disinterested investigator who unaccountably morphs into a sidekick figure, and a reporter whose involvement in the unfurling complexity feels increasingly superfluous, not to mention the more intimately involved characters Carter reacquaints with, who are quick to forgive his fleeing.

Can a point-and-click adventure be good if its story doesn't stick the landing? Powerhoof’s sublime art direction and sensitivity to mood give it immense potential to tell stories like this without resorting to potboiler cliche, and the studio's approach to UI and puzzle design is impeccable. The Drifter is a great piece of design, but it needed to avoid the easy shelter of pulp to be a fully captivating adventure.

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I like an impressive polygon count as much as the next guy, but for my money, fantasy worlds are best brought to life by top-down, 2D tile graphics. In the words of my colleague Josh Wolens, "We don't need graphics. The most powerful GPU of all is the mind."

It's why I've dumped countless hours into roguelikes like Caves of Qud, Tales of Maj'Eyal, and Dwarf Fortress's adventure mode: All I need is some evocative sprite work and some good flavor text to chew on, and I'm off to the races. Or, as is more likely the case, being brutally murdered on my way to the races by some sort of ogre or minotaur.

(Image credit: Old Dog)

Given my proclivities, it's no surprise that Tuoni caught my attention. Announced by developer Old Dog on Reddit last month, Tuoni's a turn-based, tactical roguelike with an emphasis on buildcrafting, Finnish folklore, and—for bonus points—a delicious CRT filter.

We've had plenty of Nordic inspiration in videogames since Skyrim's heyday, but I'm always glad to see Finnish flavor on display. Compared to Norse mythology, Finnish folklore—as you might expect from a place where winter can last for 200 days of the year—skews gloomier and darker, with more primordial emanations than martial heroism.

That flavor seems well represented in Tuomi. Its Steam page says its procedurally generated worlds are inhabited by "silent but all-seeing forests" where "spirits drift between trees and water" and you "might even cross paths with Näkki by a dark pond or glimpse the ancient wrath of Iki-Turso rising from the depths." I don't know what either of those are, but I've never met a pond-dweller or deeps-ancient I didn't like.

In screenshots, the player character battles Maahinen imps and inspects Suli, a sort of troll that's "covered in icy vapor from its crystallized back." As a lover of nouns, I'm particularly thrilled by the glimpse at a character's inventory, where we can see items like Jumal's Snowsteel Cloak and Kalam's Deathblade, a "shadowed blade of the moon-child, lost beneath fenlight."

That's the good stuff.

A gameplay trailer also gives us a look at Tuoni's skill progression system. Instead of being limited to a single, defined class, characters can freely select skills from archetypes like Arms Fighter and Battle Shaman. I might start out as a run-of-the-mill axeman, but after spending a few stat points in Mystics and acquiring a couple Frostborn skills, I could be hitting enemies with arctic blasts and stacking additional frost damage on my melee attacks.

Whether or not that'll be enough for my character's long-term survival is a question for a later day, but at least it seems like I'll get to inspect some interesting creatures before they knock my skull in.

Old Dog is aiming to release Tuoni some time in 2026. A demo will "hopefully" be available later this year. You can wishlist Tuoni now on Steam.

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12 years after its original release on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, Grand Theft Auto 5 is now legal to purchase and own in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The game was given a surprise 21+ rating in June by Saudi Arabia's General Authority for Media Regulation and the UAE Media Council, and officially released in both countries today.

As noted by industry analysis firm Niko Partners, the lack of official approval for GTA 5 didn't mean it was actually unavailable. Gamers could opt to import the game from other countries (with some risk that it might be seized by customs, I suppose) or simply sign up for a digital storefront account based in another country.

عِش تجربة الترفيه الهائلة مع Grand Theft Auto V وGrand Theft Auto Online المصنفة +21 في المملكة العربية السعودية ودولة الإمارات العربية المتحدة.متوفرة في 17 يوليو على PlayStation 5. pic.twitter.com/52S3VEURJKJuly 3, 2025

But a green light from the authorities removes those headaches and allows the game to be publicized as a "hey, you can buy this" kind of thing, which I have to think will spark at least a small bump in sales.

The real big deal, though, is the shift in attitude the GTA approval signals. The 21+ rating, which according to Niko Partners is new—it's not even listed on the General Authority for Media Regulation website at this point—allows GTA 5 to be sold in Saudi Arabia unmodified, and importantly also opens the door for other games that might otherwise struggle to be approved.

Previously, some games like The Witcher 3 were edited to meet the requirements of the country's censors, while others, such as Final Fantasy 16, have been banned outright because publishers refused to make the required changes.

لمحبي لعبة #FinalFantasyXIV، نود التوضيح بأنها لم تفسح بالمملكة، وذلك بسبب عدم رغبة الناشر بإجراء التعديلات اللازمة.الهيئة العامة للإعلام #المرئي_والمسموع #تصنيف_الألعاب pic.twitter.com/5OuWZJGEvXMay 3, 2023

Saudi Arabia is a notoriously conservative monarchy: Women were forbidden from driving until 2018, and the LGBTQ+ community remains brutally oppressed. In recent years, though, the country has made a high-profile embrace of videogames under the direction of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The Savvy Games Group, a subsidiary of Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund—of which bin Salman is the chairman—has invested billions of dollars into game companies including Electronic Arts, Embracer, SNK, and Niantic.

Esports has also become a major focus for bin Salman. In 2022 the PIF purchased esports event organizer ESL Gaming and tournament platform FACEIT; Saudi Arabia is also home to the Esports World Cup, and in 2027 will host the first ever Olympic Esports Games. (The Olympic Esports Games were originally slated for 2025 but were delayed earlier this year.)

But this dramatic uptick in videogame activity has also resulted in growing accusations of "esportswashing"—that Saudi Arabia is using the popularity of videogames to distract from its notoriously poor human rights record and the fact that bin Salman is widely believed to be responsible for ordering the murder and dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. In May, GeoGuessr withdrew from the 2025 Esports World Cup after a furious backlash from the community, which saw many of the game's most popular maps rendered unplayable by their makers in protest.

Every little bit helps, and I do expect that the newly-legal status of GTA 5 will spark a sales bump, but at this point it really doesn't need the extra push: Rockstar reported in May 2025 that GTA 5 has now surpassed 215 million copies sold, while the GTA series in total has racked up nearly 450 million sold.

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A great look, easy setup process and even a hanger to pop your coat on. What can't the Flexispot OC3 do? Well, I'm sorry to say the answer is: leave my posterior without pain after a long day of work.

The kind of pain that popped up isn't something I spotted immediately. In fact, it's not even the type of pain I spotted after an hour. If you'd asked me what I thought of the chair at this point, I would have said it was comfortable. That's because it is, or at least, initially feels like it.

The soft foam in the seat of my model really lets me sink in, until I hit the hard plastic underneath. What initially felt rather comforting started to hurt after a few hours. And by the end of the day, I didn't want to sit down anymore.

This is a bit of a rarity for me. It's not wholly out of the question for me to finish off a day of looking at my screen for work, and then start the night by looking at my screen while playing games. Aside from maybe a brisk walk or momentary pit stop to make dinner, I could go uninterrupted from one activity to the other.

Flexispot OC3/BS3 Specs

(Image credit: Future)

Height range: 112 cm - 124 cmMax rec. Weight: 120 kgRecline: 90-130 degreesArmrests: 2DColours: Grey (Blue and Black in the UK)Launch price: $260 | £130

Curse you, Flexispot, for causing me enough pain to pause my video games.

I should note that the version I've been sampling is technically the Flexispot BS3, which is the Flexispot OC3 but for the UK region. They are the same basic chair, except my chair came in a rather dashing all black theme, where the US version comes in a more muted grey.

Annoyingly, the price in the UK is much better than the US price. $260 works out to just shy of £200 (£193.36 as of time of writing). The Office Star ProGrid, our current choice for the best budget office chair, regularly hovers around the $200 mark, so being able to undercut that would have been a boon for the OC3.

Once at my front door, the OC3/BS3 was a super-easy build. The instructions are well laid out and easy to understand. As is the case with all chairs, it takes a second to know which way is the right way around when building, but that was solved with no more than a few moments of thought.

With just a handful of bolts and screws, plus two included hex keys, the entire chair took around twenty minutes to build from start to finish. You might want to grab a buddy as it's not a small chair, but I didn't need one.

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The BS3 model I've been sitting on looks great. It's a very classic office chair with the back support being made up of a mesh material. The seat of my model is made of a soft foam, but there's a more expensive mesh cushion available too. The cushion itself isn't where the pain comes from, but instead the lack of cushioning it provides. Underneath is a hard plastic base, and this is what ends up supporting you as you sink in. Initially, this level of support was pretty nice, but it became painful rather quickly.

It is worth noting that comfort is not only itself rather subjective, but also that the ways different chairs interact with your body will be reliant on your body type.

Initially, this level of support was pretty nice, but it became painful rather quickly.

I'm a bigger gentleman, both in height and stature, so I will naturally sink into the cushion more than someone a tad more petite. My partner, for instance, has not noted the same level of pain that I have, though they also find the chair to have a rather hard plastic bottom.

It's an easy-to-adjust chair, with a single lever on the bottom being used to both push the chair up and down, but also adjust the recline. Everything is very smooth here, and the recline is comfortable in use. I did notice that the recline tends to catch in specific sections, so instead of being able to set a specific recline on the chair, you put it into a position.

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This means if you are comfortable in a very specific angle, chances are it will let you hover a bit below or a bit above that. This isn't a particularly unique way for reclining chairs to work, but worth noting if you like a very specific angle.

The armrests are smart, if a little behind their competition. They don't have the 4D elements you may want, with them only going up and down. To move them, you have to fully press in a button, then pull them up or down, which means I've never accidentally moved them around.

With included lumbar support for better posture, you can adjust it up and down to better accommodate your back. This works as intended, and is both easy to move and comfortable to lean into. Above this is a 2D headrest that, for lack of a better word, snaps onto the top of the seat. I very much felt like I was doing something wrong installing it, as you have to pry it onto a clip, but once attached, it all feels rather sturdy.

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With this headrest comes the most unique element of this office/gaming chair hybrid: a built-in coat hanger. With my location constantly flitting from sunny to rainy, I've used the coat hanger far more than I was expecting to.

I've never liked hanging a slightly damp coat on the back of my chair because I could feel the hood on my neck. This attachment is a neat accessory, though not one I predict the rest of the chair industry learning from.

Buy if…

✅ You find yourself in need of a place to hang a coat: The coat hanger attached to the headrest is a neat little accessory that, surprisingly, I used rather often. ✅ You want a classic office look: My sleek black model would look perfect in an office space, thanks to its neat look and mesh back material.

Don't buy if…

❌ You work for full days in your office: The initially rather comforting hard seat soon pained me if I sat in it for more than half a day. ❌ You don't want to pay more than the UK: The UK's BS3 model is the same as the US's OC3, yet the US pays more.

I like almost everything about the OC3, except the feel. And, unfortunately, feel is almost everything with a chair. If it was comfortable enough to sit on (and didn't ruin my posture), I'd take a particularly comfy box over a painful chair. Given that I will spend long days working and long nights playing games, my chair needs to be comfortable enough not to get in the way.

The price point is very solid (though better in the UK), it looks tidy, the armrests are very stable, and the coat hanger is a neat addition that helps it stand out. An hour or so after setting it up and sitting down, I was convinced my review would be very positive. Boy, was I wrong. A few weeks after my testing, I swapped back to the Flexispot BS9 I'd been using prior, and I haven't looked back since. I do miss the coat hanger, though.

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NetEase has retracted some changes it made to Wolverine for Marvel Rivals season 3, changes that made him stronger both on his own and as part of a team-up with the new hero Phoenix. All of which, predictably, made life hell for Vanguard players.

"Time to temper Logan's rage and slightly reduce his survivability," a blog post says. "In the recently launched season 3, we observed that Wolverine's new Team-Up Ability with Phoenix has been bringing a bit too much heat to Vanguards.

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"This duo's combined power has led to battles for Vanguards feeling less like a hero's journey and more like a mutiny, potentially sidelining key Vanguard heroes. To restore balance and keep the fight epic, we're nerfing Wolverine's Team-Up Ability and dialling down his threat level against the Vanguards in this update."

Wolverine is every Vanguard's worst nightmare, and has been since the start of Marvel Rivals, just ask our resident Vanguard main, Rory Norris, who has been banning him in every match since his buff at the beginning of season 3.

This hero is such a pain due to his unique ability to grab an enemy hero and whisk them away from their team. All Wolverine needs to do is drag a Vanguard main away from their team, cutting off their healing, and they'll be picked off pretty quickly, as they aren't mobile enough to get away.

(Image credit: Netease)

But alongside this terrifying skill comes an irritating survivability. Even if a Wolverine gets caught trying to kidnap a Vanguard and is interrupted from doing so, chances are you won't be able to kill him thanks to his passive ability, Regenerative Healing Factor. This passive will heal Wolverine, giving him a one-off bonus health and removing all debuffs when his health bar is depleted. You can reduce the cooldown of this passive by getting assists and kills. In short, it really sucks to play against a good Wolverine.

To balance things out, as much as is possible, Wolverine's Berserk Claw Strike percentage damage has been reduced per attack and alongside the maximum range. His healing passive will also have a longer cooldown, going from 90 seconds to 105 seconds, and 10 seconds to 12 seconds after he's got a kill.

The slightly frightening team-up ability with Wolverine and Phoenix, Primal Flame, has also been weakened. "Our fiery mutant duo's bond has been a little too hot to handle," the blog post says. "So we're cooling down Wolverine's healing when teaming up with Phoenix." The lifesteal, which Wolverine gains from Phoenix, is down from 33% to 25%.

I'm sure Wolverine will still carry on being the nuisance that many Vanguards dread to see in games. At the very least, these adjustments will make him slightly easier to play against. Although in the future it would be nice not to see already strong heroes given buffs, which then means they have to be nerfed just five days after the initial patch.

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Need to Know

What is it? A Pac-Man Metroidvania, for some reason. Release date July 17, 2025Expect to pay $30/£25 Developer Bandai NamcoPublisher Bandai NamcoReviewed on Asus ROG AllySteam Deck VerifiedLink Official site

Bandai Namco have built a massive love letter to the 2D Metroidvania, particularly the Metroid part. They’ve set it on a deadly planet where they want to tell a tragic sci-fi story of doomed soldiers, deadly superweapons, and, er, sibling rivalry. So you may think deciding it should star Pac-Man sounds like a terrible idea. Because it is. Because of course it is.

Not since Bob Hoskins’ Mario shoved his face down a woman’s top have I witnessed such a bizarrely adult reimagining of a family-friendly character. While Shadow Labyrinth never goes that far (perhaps they’re saving that for DLC) this is still a game where Pac-Man helps you slaughter monsters with brains on the wrong sides of their skulls. Then he helpfully swallows their spines afterwards so you can spend them at the shop.

(Image credit: Bandai Namco)

Well, technically it isn’t Pac-Man. Here your companion is called ‘Puck’, a cute nod to what was almost Pac-Man’s name/a helpful distancing of this monster from being considered the real deal.

Because Puck is a manipulative, untrustworthy, Devil on your shoulder who’s unlikely to be fronting any Saturday morning cartoons anytime soon. You actually play as an amnesiac who Puck summoned from another dimension to help with their shady quest, and Puck keeps referring to you as ‘Number Eight’. Brrr.

From the moment you pick up a sword it becomes clear that this is going to be a slightly more routine adventure than the oddball premise suggests. Combat’s a traditional hacky slashy affair, with a three-strike combo, a stun attack, and a lovely enemy-interrupting strike that’ll use up some of the stamina you need for dodging. All fun enough with a satisfying sense of impact, hurt only by Nine Sols and Prince of Persia rudely raising the Metroidvania combat bar unfairly high last year.

(Image credit: Bandai Namco)

Traditionally Pac-Man has chomped on his enemies. Here, Puck prefers to munch down on the corpses after you’ve done all the fighting (someone’s getting lazier in their old age). Chow down on enough fallen foes and you’ll be able to briefly turn into a giant invincible mech with a Pac-Man centre. Good goofy fun, though I’d have liked to have seen munching woven into the combat more. The brutal finisher where a horrifying mega-Puck swallows a boss whole is sadly relegated to the cutscenes.

After an overly linear opening few hours, the planet finally opens up, revealing a solid Metroidvania core. There’s a few too many ‘surprise’ combat arenas with the game’s limited bestiary and industrial zones that look overly similar to the last industrial zone you explored. But otherwise this is full of great navigation puzzles, platforming challenges, and poring over the map for secrets that reminded me why we get so many Metroidvania’s. They’re still great fun to chip away at and Shadow Labyrinth gets the important parts right.

(Image credit: Bandai Namco)

Some of the best areas are pretty far off the beaten path, making exploring worthwhile. A spaceship is a particular highlight, a complex network of locked doors and hidden routes that had me double-checking the map every few seconds. Bliss!And it’s huge too. There’s easily forty hours of game here, even if a lot of that is because the difficulty curve suddenly decides to take inspiration from Pac-Man’s horrible spiky mouth during the brutal climax.

(Image credit: Bandai Namco)

So Shadow Labyrinth is an easy game to enjoy moment-to-moment, albeit with the niggling sense that you’ve played a lot of this before. Hollow Knight’s air-dash makes its obligatory appearance, along with the usual double jump and hookshot. All solidly implemented but there’s long stretches where you could be playing basically any Metroidvania from the last few years.

The game gets more interesting when it leans into the Pac-Man of it all. Find and activate blue rails and suddenly you switch to playing as Puck, munching his way along them. Metroid’s morph ball is an obvious influence, but these bits play more like that series’ much fiddlier spider ball, as you hop from rail to rail munching pellets and trying to avoid obstacles and enemies (or briefly turn back into Number 8 to dispose of them). A novel way to explore, and later sections that constantly have you switching between the two playstyles make for some great platforming.

Mazed & confused

(Image credit: Bandai Namco)

Then there are the maze levels, wherein you're warped into a completely separate stage where you are playing Pac-Man, albeit a version of Pac-Man that’s been through the Jeff Minter machine. They’re essentially inspired remixes of the original game, with smart new ideas like platforms that can be weaponised when you slam into them, and weapons like a decoy Pac-Man that the fine people of 1980 would have killed for. The strict five-minute timer is a blessing and a curse here, as it’s not always obvious what you’re supposed to be doing. But the briefness of these stages usually makes the pull of one more go when you mess up hard to resist.

These sections also have terrific energy. The dance music thumps merrily, with the colorful visuals and sound effects practically cheering you on as you gobble up ghosts. And then you return to Shadow Labyrinth proper, with its mournful, forgettable tunes (wait… was there music?) and uninspired art style. It’s hard not to feel a little deflated that more of the all-singing all-dancing tone of the mazes couldn’t have seeped into the tone of the main adventure.

(Image credit: Bandai Namco)

While the game isn’t completely humor-free, the self-seriousness of the majority of it is as baffling as it is boring. An overly-talky technobabble festival, rife with cliches and dull stock characters. Even the Steam achievements have text like ‘in war, the size of the hand wielding the sword matters not’. You start longing for the days this guy stuck to saying ‘wakka wakka wakka’ instead of horrible Sun Tzu fan-fiction.

It’s tough getting dramatic range out of a character who’s essentially a melon with a slice missing. And while Puck’s tendency to constantly gasp at plot revelations is pretty funny (I mean, what else can they physically do?) there's nothing in here as emotionally moving as Pac-Man meeting his one true love in the first cutscene of Ms Pac-Man. The fact that Shadow Labyrinth hopelessly tries just reminds you what a silly idea a dark, sombre reimagining was in the first place.

(Image credit: Bandai Namco)

Look past that rubbish and you’ll find a fun Metroidvania suffering from an amusing identity crisis. A perfectly playable Hollow Knight-lite one moment, an updating of classic Pac-Man gobbling the next, with a mediocre sci-fi yarn sprinkled on top. Short of Hello Kitty developing a taste for crystal meth, it’s likely the oddest official rebrand you’ll see this year. An interesting mess rather than a surprise triumph, then, but I’ll take it over another bloody Pac-Man World any day.

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Nick found some pretty nice post-Prime Day prices on GPUs earlier today. But only relatively speaking. You're still looking at over $700 for a '70 Ti-class Nvidia card. Ouch. And one of the reasons why is surely the dominance of TSMC when it comes to manufacturing chips for the likes of Nvidia, AMD and, latterly, Intel. Which is why the company's latest record profits announcement matters.

TSMC has just reported its figures for the second quarter of 2025, and the result is a whopping $13.53 billion in profit. Yes, profit. TSMC's revenues for the period were over $31 billion. Those are some margins.

For context, AMD's most recent figures showed $709 million from revenues of $7.4 billion. So, AMD's profits are about 1/10th of its revenues. TSMC's are better than one-third. As it happens, Nvidia's latest figures show an almost identical ratio of revenue to profit as TSMC, with $44 billion of revenue and just under $19 billion in profit. Ker-ching!

TSMC made around $11 billion profit in the first quarter of this year. So, if it carries on like this, the company will hit around $50 billion in profit in 2025.

Of course, the simple fact that TSMC, or Nvidia for that matter, is making pots of cash doesn't directly explain why PC graphics cards are so pricey, especially since TSMC attributes its flush fortunes to the AI boom. But one other element might.

Now you know why an RTX 5070 costs so much... (Image credit: Future)

Investment bank Morgan Stanley publishes estimates of TSMC's wafer prices, which 3DCenter collates here. Wafers, of course, are the shiny discs onto which computer chips are etched using impossibly complex lithography machines.

Morgan Stanley reckons TSMC's current N3 wafers cost about $25,000 a pop. That compares with $15,000 for an N5 wafer cost in 2023 and 2024, which is essentially the technology Nvidia and AMD use for their current GPUs.

The cost of N5 is said to have increased a bit this year to about $20,000. But here's the really scary bit. Morgan Stanley thinks the going price for TSMC's N2 node, which is just coming online now and is expected to debut in Apple's next iPhone in September, is around $30,000.

Now, you might expect AMD and Nvidia to not leapfrog N3 for their next chips and go straight to that uber-pricey N2 node. But N3 is still more expensive than N5.

Of course, N3 is more dense than N5, so you'll still probably get more transistors per dollar going for the new node. But then you'd hope that the next RTX '70 series GPU, let's call it the RTX 6070, will have quite a few more transistors than the current RTX 5070.

Anyway, wafer prices going up is hardly a good thing for actual graphics card prices. And TSMC making bumper profits alongside Nvidia isn't all that encouraging, either. Oh well!

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Nothing brings to light the spookily anarchic nature of the international order more than cyber warfare. It's happening all the time, in that ethereal realm of bits and bytes—poking, prodding, testing. We might picture this as state agencies tampering with other state agencies, but the reality is often far from it, as demonstrated by a recent report from cybersecurity company Proofpoint's Threat Research team (via Mynavi).

This research shows how Chinese state-sponsored cyber attackers have been targeting the Taiwanese semiconductor industry. And this in itself, I'm sure, isn't exactly news, but Proofpoint explains that this has been at an "elevated level" over the past few months:

"Despite public reporting on semiconductor targeting from China-aligned threat actors, Proofpoint directly observed only sporadic targeting of this sector. Since March 2025, this shifted to sightings of multiple campaigns from different China-aligned groups specifically targeting this sector, with a particular emphasis on Taiwanese entities."

The cybersecurity company thinks these attacks are probably attempts at espionage aimed at beefing up its own tech: "This activity likely reflects China’s strategic priority to achieve semiconductor self-sufficiency and decrease reliance on international supply chains and technologies, particularly in light of US and Taiwanese export controls."

This risk—that if China is denied or restricted access to chips, it might look to develop its own competition—isn't exactly an unfamiliar one. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, for one, has been banging the drum of the need to "accelerate the diffusion of American AI technology around the world" rather than block its adoption abroad. Only last week, he reportedly said that "the American tech stack should be the global standard, just as the American dollar is the standard by which every country builds on."

(Image credit: Intel)

So, it's certainly a familiar argument. And it's one that could even have had some weight in the recent decision to allow Nvidia to start selling H20 chips to China again. (And now I hear AMD might be joining the party, too? Boy, does the world of tech move fast.)

On the other hand, none of that is strictly about semiconductors (Nvidia being a fabless enterprise, after all). And if we think tech export restrictions, tariffs, and other isolationist US strategies are at least part of what's led to big recent semiconductor investments in the US, then there might be reason to consider such espionage threats 'worth it', so to speak. Who knows what the bigwigs use to weigh up those risk calculations.

Presumably, companies migrating to the US rather than Taiwan wouldn't do anything to stop these cyber attacks, though.

The attacks in question targeted "organizations involved in the manufacturing, design, and testing of semiconductors and integrated circuits, wider equipment and services supply chain entities within this sector, as well as financial investment analysts specializing in the Taiwanese semiconductor market."

This activity likely reflects China’s strategic priority to achieve semiconductor self-sufficiency ... particularly in light of US and Taiwanese export controls.

Mark Kelly and the Proofpoint Threat Research Team

They were primarily phishing attacks, some attempting to deliver a Cobalt Strike (this being a wide-spanning pentesting tool) or Voldemort backdoor (this being a "custom backdoor written in C") and another that attempted to tunnel data out and deploy a remote monitoring and management tool on targets "deemed of interest."

Again, spooky stuff, but bear in mind these attacks, even if they were very targeted (ie, spear-phishing), were still phishing ones. Which means they require you to fall for them and download an email attachment, for instance. Though saying that, phishing attacks of this level of sophistication can be hard to spot—Proofpoint explains that one attack actor "used compromised Taiwanese university email addresses to send their phishing email to recruitment and HR personnel."

Thus we find the state of corporate espionage today. Except I guess this is state-sponsored corporate espionage, which is expected, given how intertwined with the state the corporate world is in China. Perhaps those H20s will keep the hunger for such espionage low. Somehow, I doubt it.

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When it comes to image quality, the latest FSR 4 iteration of its upscaling technology definitely made AMD highly competitive with Nvidia's DLSS. But game support? Not so much. Which is why the OptiScaler tool is so handy. And so vexing when it comes to AMD itself.

OptiScaler has been updated so that it now effectively supports running AMD's FSR 4 in any game that supports DLSS 2+ or FSR 2+ and doesn't use the Vulcan API or anti-cheat technology.

Of course, the caveat is that you need a GPU based on AMD's latest RDNA 4 tech, such as the Radeon RX 9070 XT, to run FSR 4 at all. Oh, there's another caveat. For switching on FSR 4 with OptiScaler, it takes more than just a couple of mouse clicks.

In fact, for FSR 4 you have to manually install it by copy-pasting files into specific game directories, different for each title, with further settings to adjust upon install per game via a bat script.

Still, if the modding community can do it, even in this somewhat user unfriendly format, the question is why AMD can't. The official list of titles that support FSR 4 can be found here. And, frankly, it is not impressive. There are 65 titles, total, and the majority are hardly AAA classics.

So, why doesn't AMD provide a similar capability to inject FSR 4 into a wider list of games? AMD made a net profit of over $709 million on revenues of $7.4 billion in the first quarter of 2025. So, any notion that it lacks the resources doesn't bear even cursory scrutiny.

Regardless of how you turn it on, you'll need an RDNA 4 GPU like the 9070 XT to run FSR 4. (Image credit: Future)

It's frustrating because FSR 4, with its transition to AI-powered upscaling, was a major step forward for AMD. By most analyses, FSR 4's image quality falls somewhere Nvidia's DLSS 3 and its latest transformer-based DLSS 4 upscaling. FSR 3, by contrast, is generally viewed to be inferior to DLSS 3.

So, AMD has done all the difficult, expensive work getting FSR 4 developed and running nicely, only to skimp at the final implementation and game support, thereby doing a pretty effective job of undermining it.

A cynic might argue that AMD has form when it comes to this sort thing. Developing great hardware and software and then not quite finishing the job doesn't feel totally novel for AMD.

Anywho, the good news is that you may well have an option for trying to get FSR 4 running on your favourite title, provided it didn't fall at the Vulcan or anti-cheat hurdle. And if it's a game you spend a lot of time on, the slight phaff of the initial setup via OptiScaler is hardly the end of the world.

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I remember the first time I looked into a kaleidoscope as a kid, it was so strange and disarming to me that I threw up a little bit, and then it was confiscated by my parents. Sad, but probably for the best. It's a memory that I pushed so far down I'd almost entirely forgotten about it, until I played Hyperbeat.

It lives up to the claim that it's "A rhythm game like no other". Instead of being set in a static environment, the notes fly towards you, each indicating whether you need to slash, ride, or avoid them. It's set in something called the jungle, which is essentially just a black and white tube in which you can manoeuvre to hit the notes.

It's a cool concept that works well almost all of the time. The exception being when the song gets chaotic and tons of different coloured notes start to fly towards you as you race through the tube at high speed: things start to get nauseous. I had to take a break to look at a distant tree out my window, just to stop me from seeing my lunch again.

Hyperbeat's UI is also a little messy, as it tries to emulate low-poly games of old. While that works to make a stunning aesthetic, the UI definitely takes some getting used to as it's not very intuitive, and at first glance, during a run, there just seem to be loads of random lines, numbers, and words scattered around the screen.

There is an option to turn off the outer rim of the tube, which I've found does go some way to helping, as it makes the run less tunnel-visioned. But even still, taking the time to adjust is certainly worth it, because there's a lot to love about this rhythm game.

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There are only four songs available to play in the demo right now, but each one is fantastic. They aren't just catchy, which is a bonus for sure, but the actions all line up with the song so well.

Now I know that should be the bare minimum for a rhythm game, but that's not necessarily the case for a lot of games out there. Playing a map where the beat doesn't line up with the notes is such a pet peeve of mine. It's an issue which is quite prevalent in games that have player-made maps, like Osu.

While the majority of player-made maps are great, some are far better than others, and there's no guarantee that the song will actually work in alignment with the run layout. It can feel like you're being put at an unfair disadvantage, which sucks when all you want to do is have fun and enjoy the music. So I'm really happy that this isn't the case for Hyperbeat, and it bodes well for future maps.

Otherwise, Hyperbeat shows a lot of promise; there's still just a short demo available to play, and with it set to release some time later this year, the issues with the UI are hopefully something that'll get worked out down the line, or maybe it's just something that I'll get used to. Who knows, I may even be able to look at a kaleidoscope again without feeling ill.

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All of us must do our bit to counteract the effects of climate change, no matter how small. This, I firmly believe. Meta appears to be taking this principle to heart, as it's proudly announced that it's using its own mix of AI-optimised, lower-carbon, "green concrete" to build the floor of its Rosemount data center.

The company says it has developed an open-source AI tool to design concrete mixes that are stronger and more sustainable. The efforts are part of a collaboration with cement manufacturer Amrize and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in order to "accelerate the discovery of new concrete mixtures that meet traditional requirements alongside newer sustainability needs."

It's not just in the name of minimising climate impacts, either. Concrete takes time to cure, and Meta is scaling up its data center capability so quickly, it's currently housing some of the racks in tents while it waits for the buildings themselves to be finished.

Never mind that the concrete itself has to be somewhat specific to the purpose. Data center racks are tremendously heavy, and the floor needs to support vast numbers of them at once, along with cooling lines, vibration dampening, and all sorts of other factors specific to the use case.

Meta's AI model uses BoTorch and Ax, two types of open-source software that specialise in Bayesian optimisation and adaptive experimentation, respectively. The model takes into account all sorts of factors, from compressive strength curves to the sustainability of the sourcing of key concrete ingredients, in order to come up with a suitable recipe for a sturdy-yet-penguin-friendly data center floor—such as the one that's been poured at the Rosemount data facility.

(Image credit: Sameer Al-Doumy via Getty Images)

And, it must be said, current concrete production does appear to be a major contributor to CO2 emissions, accounting for 8% of the world's total, according to the WEF. So, minimising the unwanted effects in large-scale constructions like this is a task worth undertaking, if you ask me.

But I can't help but think about the environmental impacts of, y'know, the data center itself. While progress is being made in renewable energy solutions, these modern data centers are predicted to draw such a huge amount of wattage that it's difficult to see how renewable energy can possibly keep up.

It's not just power, either. Data centers require huge volumes of water for cooling, which is often drawn away from communities where the wet stuff is a precious commodity. And I haven't even started on Meta's current plans for expansion. Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, recently announced plans to build several multi-gigawatt superclusters, the first of which, Prometheus, is due to come online next year.

And that's before we get to planned "titan clusters", gigantic, almost unfeasibly-large data facilities dedicated to developing AI features that, with the best will in the world, don't feel like the highest priority when the planet appears to be going to hell in an ecological handcart.

Zuckerberg says that Meta is building "multiple more" of these gigantic facilities, and that "just one... covers a significant part of the footprint of Manhattan." Still, at least the floors may be made of very eco-friendly concrete.

I don't know about you, but I'm going to sleep soundly tonight knowing that fact.

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Nintendo has taken a break from dispatching Sardaukar detachments against people looking askance at its copyright to cast a couple of young actors in the upcoming Legend of Zelda movie. Ladies and gentlemen, your Zelda will be played by Bo Bragason, and your Link will be portrayed by Benjamin Evan Ainsworth. I don't know who either of them are, but spiritually I'm an 87 year old man, so I wouldn't take that as indicative of anything.

The castings were announced in a tweet purportedly written by Shigeru Miyamoto, which I have to imagine was not actually written by Shigeru Miyamoto. "I am very much looking forward to seeing both of them on the big screen," said maybe-Miyamoto from his Nintendo throne. "The film is scheduled to be released in theaters on May 7, 2027. Thank you for your patience."

This is Miyamoto. I am pleased to announce that for the live-action film of The Legend of Zelda, Zelda will be played by Bo Bragason-san, and Link by Benjamin Evan Ainsworth-san. I am very much looking forward to seeing both of them on the big screen. (1/2) pic.twitter.com/KA5XW3lwulJuly 16, 2025

Both actors are up-and-comers: 21-year-old Bragason has been in four films and a smattering of TV shows up to now. Well, kind of. One of those four films was doing mocap for the character Luna in Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy 15, so you likely won't recognise her from that. You might recognise her from last year's vampire comedy The Radleys or her role in the TV series Three Girls, though.

Doe-eyed 16-year-old Evan Ainsworth, meanwhile, voiced Pinocchio in the 2022 live-action version. More importantly, he was apparently in Emmerdale (a British soap) one time, which will leave our US readers unfazed but send a jolt into a deep, ancestral area of UK readers' spines.

It's interesting, of course, that Nintendo's opted for relatively unknown young actors instead of the big box office names that headlined the Mario Movie. Perhaps the corporation is a bit more confident that its series' names alone can bring in audiences? Or maybe Miyamoto just saw Bragason and Evan Ainsworth's auditions and wouldn't accept a substitute.

I cannot tell you if the Zelda film will be good, but I will predict it will make more money than the entire world's GDP between the start of recorded history and the year 1750. The Mario Movie, Nintendo's last big marquee cinematic project, made over a billion dollars worldwide. I suspect Zelda will give it a run for its money.

2025 games: This year's upcoming releasesBest PC games: Our all-time favoritesFree PC games: Freebie festBest FPS games: Finest gunplayBest RPGs: Grand adventuresBest co-op games: Better together

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The first side quest you're likely to run into in Destiny 2: The Edge of Fate, Vessel of the Nine, is all about none other than Lodi and helping him get to grips with his situation. It's a brilliant story, but the actual quest steps leave a lot to be desired. Specifically, the objective markers seem to be even more broken than usual, causing it to be an unnecessarily confusing quest.

Most of the quest is relatively straightforward, but below, I'll go over the two main hurdles in Vessel of the Nine: the slime bodies and the final quest step. This is where the markers seem to mess up the most and give you little guidance.

Destiny 2 Edge of Fate exotics: Armoury expansionDestiny 2 Graviton Spike: How to get the new hand cannonDestiny 2 gear tiers: A new gear system in The Edge of FateDestiny 2 Armour 3.0: Time for a fresh fitDestiny 2 armour set bonuses: Coordinate your gear

Vessel of the Nine slime body locations

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(Image credit: Bungie)Image 2 of 2

(Image credit: Bungie)

You'll need to find three slime bodies throughout the Vessel of the Nine quest in order to progress. After collecting Lodi's journal to begin the quest, and following the waypoint into a courtyard filled with Vex and Fallen, you'll need to "search for a signature that might indicate Lodi's presence", which is actually the first 'slime body'—or rather, dead Fallen covered in pustules.

First slime body: The first one is just to the left of the locked circular door, to the left of where you entered the courtyard, tucked between rocks. Interact with it to progress the quest, requiring you to then open the locked door and head inside the facility.Second slime body: Once inside, you'll need to find the second slime body, which is by a pile of boxes to the left of the room you enter—it's hard to miss, really. Keep moving forward, fighting through more Vex and opening a locked cave tunnel you'll have to climb up. Eventually, you'll reach a large cave-like area with a platform at the centre where several Vex and Fallen are fighting.Third slime body: The final slimy signature in Vessel of the Nine is tucked down the right side of the ramp at the opposite end of the cave, so go straight ahead from where you enter, down the ramp, and turn right to find it on the rocky ledge.

Vessel of the Nine final quest step

(Image credit: Bungie)

Once you've found the final slime body for Lodi, you need to "use the resonance of the energy point to attract the Archon's attention". As for what that means, you're given no leads as the quest marker just points to the ceiling.

What you need to do is climb up the broken wall panels at the back of the room to reach the crane, where you can then interact with the glowing symbol to finish the quest.

For beating Vessel of the Nine, you'll earn the Sublimation scout rifle and three Fated Ciphers that you can use to focus gear back at the altar.

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Julian LeFay, a programmer and chief engineer at Bethesda until his departure in 1998, is stepping back from game development and his current project, The Wayward Realms. LeFay has been suffering from cancer for several years and, per CEO of OnceLost Games Ted Peterson, has made the decision "for his health and to live his final moments surrounded by his loved ones."

Peterson announced the news in a video, accompanied by some reminiscing about how the pair's careers have intertwined. "I first met Julian LeFay in 1992 when I came in, barely out of college, to interview for a junior writer position at Bethesda Softworks," says Peterson. "I had never been in a game development company before, and when I left Julian said, 'If you get the job, you have to lose the suit.'"

LeFay was "an eccentric figure" and "very tall and slender, scruffily handsome with a default scowl, and the most magnificent pompadour mullet in history." He was "a hotshot hacker style programmer" with a particular love for pen-and-paper roleplaying games, "and the game that eventually became the Elder Scrolls 1: Arena was his dream project."

Peterson has previously spoken about LeFay being the driving force behind the first Elder Scrolls, which began as more of a combat-focused title before the team added more and more roleplaying elements. This is what led some to dub LeFay "the father of the Elder Scrolls," and he would also work on The Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall and The Elder Scrolls: Battlespire, before leaving Bethesda in 1998.

"I could tell stories about our friendship and how we’ve worked together recently with our team on Wayward Realms as creative and technical directors, but I need to come to the point of this," says Peterson. "Julian has been courageously battling cancer. His doctors have informed us that his time with us is limited, and we are preparing to say goodbye to a true legend of the industry.

"Even in the face of this challenge, Julian’s dedication to The Wayward Realms and to all of you, our community, has never wavered. He has worked tirelessly to ensure that his vision for 'The Grand RPG' will live on, but now Julian must step away from OnceLost Games for his health and to live his final moments surrounded by his loved ones."

Peterson invites people to share "thoughts, prayers, well wishes, memories, or the impact Julian’s life and work have had on you. Your words of support mean more than you know, not just to Julian, but to all of us who have been privileged to work alongside him.

"Obviously, the team has already had a chance to say goodbye and give their individual messages, and I sat by his hospital bed, reading them to him. In that case, I was reading them out loud and Julian was giving me dictation to reply back, which is rather hard to do through my tears."

It is obvious from the video that this is deeply personal and distressing news for Peterson to deliver. He ends with "a final quote from the eminently quotable Julian LeFay" from the last meeting the team had with him.

"It is personal," said LeFay. "And if it’s not personal, then you’re just doing work for hire and you’ll never have the motivation to accomplish a significant goal."

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Among all the hubbub surrounding Nvidia's announcement that it was filing applications to sell H20 GPUs to China once more, it would be easy to forget that it's not the only company making desirable high-end AI hardware. It looks like AMD wants to get in on the Chinese summer AI GPU bonanza, too.

That's according to respected industry analyst Patrick Moorhead, who's posted a statement from AMD confirming that its own license application to export MI308 products to China will be "moving forward for review."

Looks like $AMD MI308 for 🇨🇳is a go as well. Statement from @AMD below: pic.twitter.com/mesdbvWyw9July 15, 2025

Bloomberg also confirms that AMD's MI308 chips may soon be winging their way eastwards, as part of the Trump administration's apparent loosening of restrictions regarding the export of high-powered US chips to China.

The deal is said to be part of a newly minted trade agreement between the countries involving rare earth metals and magnets, and comes as something of a surprise given the US government's recent position on China.

Reports earlier this year suggested that President Trump was keen on tightening export controls on semiconductors and high-end US chips crossing the border, while in April, his administration hit China with stonkingly high tariffs on a variety of trade goods.

Still, the restrictions appear to be easing (at least with the correct license), so it's no surprise that AMD wants to grab the opportunity with both hands. Its Instinct MI300 Series AI accelerators have been fairly well-received, and the MI308 was developed specifically to comply with earlier export controls.

Still, much like the gaming market, it's estimated that Nvidia holds the vast majority of the AI GPU market share, up to 92% by some calculations. The opening up of the trade border represents an opportunity to make headway in a market that was otherwise inaccessible, though, so I'd imagine AMD will be keen to hit the ground running as soon as those licenses are cleared.

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Some Minisforum mini PCs are being recalled due to incorrect capacitor materials, but let me ease at least some people's concerns right away. This problem doesn't apply to Minisforum mini gaming PCs. It applies only to a specific batch of NAB9 mini PCs.

Minisforum explains (via VideoCardz) that the "potential issue" affects "some NAB 9 Mini PC units manufactured between September 19, 2024, and March 14, 2025." The NAB9 isn't a gaming PC, as it lacks a dedicated GPU and doesn't have an integrated GPU capable of proper gaming.

The company continues: "In extreme cases, these devices may experience startup failures, specifically abnormal shutdowns or failure to power on after a normal shutdown, with no indicator lights turning on. Our investigation revealed that this issue is due to a mix-up in the capacitor materials supplied by our vendor for this batch."

If you do have one of these mini PCs, you can check if yours is affected by reading the serial number on the white label on the underside. If the third to fifth numbers are between 386 and 526, or between 017 to 117, and if you're experiencing startup issues, then you might be affected by this capacitor issue.

I'm a little sceptical of the range that Minisforum suggests, though, because after looking into the NAB9 I found that a fair few online users claimed to have had startup problems before September 19 2024.

A Minisforum AtomMan G7 Ti mini PC. Neither this model nor the Venus UM790 Pro pictured at the top of the article are known to be affected. (Image credit: Future)

Although it seems like replacing the CMOS battery helped these users, this fix only lasted a few months before the PCs wouldn't boot again. This could be a separate issue, of course, but it does make me question whether the problem might span wider than the time frame Minisforum suggests.

At any rate, if you think you're affected and your PC was manufactured in that time span, you can contact Minisforum (support@minisforum.com) or submit a report "through the original purchase channel", whatever that means.

Affected units, the company says, will need to be returned for verification, and then once it's confirmed a replacement unit will be shipped out to you with an additional 12-month warranty.

This wouldn't be the first time dodgy capacitors have caused an issue for manufacturers of electronics. They may be tiny, but pick the wrong capacitors and it can quickly turn into a catastrophe. One famous event spanning the early 2000s, dubbed the 'capacitor plague', saw widespread issues due to faulty capacitors. Y2K never happened, but this was very much a real nightmare.

Oh, and in more recent history, capacitors were the likely culprit for various issues on some graphics cards, such as EVGA's RTX 3080.

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Acquiring the Graviton Spike exotic hand cannon in Destiny 2's new The Edge of Fate expansion is likely the first thing you'll want to do after you complete the main campaign. For one, you can't actually do it before, but grabbing the fancy new destination exotic has always been a nice post-campaign cooldown, solving a few lil’ puzzles and getting an exotic out of it.

The Graviton Through the Ages quest is actually quite simple, but I've also included details about how to get each of the Graviton Spike intrinsic upgrades, which are a little trickier. While pursuing this quest, don't forget your newfound ability to transform into a Matterspark whenever you want, since you'll be using your ball form quite a bit in the following puzzles.

All that said, here's how to get Graviton Spike and its intrinsic upgrades in Destiny 2's new The Edge of Fate expansion.

How to complete the Graviton Through the Ages quest

The quest sees you tracking down four weapon parts on Kepler (Image credit: Bungie)

After you finish the campaign, you'll be able to acquire the Graviton Through the Ages exotic quest from Lodi to get Graviton Spike. This quest consists of four main steps as you track down a weapon part in each of Kepler's main regions. I'll run through the steps for each below, plus provide a video clip of the trickiest bit (actually finding the part).

Graviton Spike Outer Steppes weapon part

After speaking to Lodi and acquiring Rosetta level 3 and then speaking to the Emeritus in the Caldera, you'll have to triangulate the location of the weapon piece in the Outer Steppes:

Follow the nav marker to the search area in the Outer Steppes—besides the marker, you'll know you're going the right way if you have to Mattermorph some metal sheets.As you enter the search area, you'll spot a Tracer Shank off to the left, shooting at a Rosetta Sentry centurion enemy hidden behind the building.Kill the Rosetta Sentry and interact with the symbol console next to it to "Input fluent Aionian command".Follow the nav marker to the new search area.When you reach the search area—shown in the clip above—drop down to the right and Matterspark to charge the generator before hopping into the launcher.Matterspark and charge the next generator before rolling through the tunnel.Charge the final generator to open the door and interact to "Search" the black object inside.

Graviton Spike Gorge weapon part

After speaking to the Emeritus again, you'll get the next weapon part search area in the Gorge. This follows the same structure:

Follow the nav marker to the Rosetta Sentry in the small room, kill it, and then "Input fluent Aionian command" on the console just behind it under the vex arch.Proceed to the new nav marker until you have to Matterspark through a tunnel with a cyclops directly on the other side.Jump across the gap—shown in the clip above—and Matterspark through the hole on the right to grab Mattermorph in the next room.Use Mattermorph to exit the room and Matterspark back into the tunnel, going right at the turning this time into a small room.Mattermorph the panel in front of you and search the black substance.

Graviton Spike Exiles Accord weapon part

After the previous step, speak with Lodi in Caldera again, then it's off to Exile's Accord for the third weapon part:

Follow the nav marker into Exile's Accord—you'll know you're going the right way if you have to Matterspark through a portal into the search area.Off to the left of the search area room, you'll find the Rosetta Sentry fighting a Hydra in a smaller room. Kill it and "Input fluent Aionian command" on the console.Go back the way you came through the Matterspark portal—don't jump through the hole in the ceiling like the nav marker says.Collect the Relocator from the far left corner of the room—shown in the clip above—and then jump up onto the platform next to it with the teleporter pad.Fire the Relocator through the vent directly above the pad and portal through to the next room.Turn left to spot and search the black substance.

Graviton Spike Central Academy weapon part

Once again, you'll need to return to Emeritus after the previous step. Instead of killing a Rosetta Sentry this time, you'll have to kill some other vex instead:

Collect Vex Data Fragments by defeating vex (powerful enemies drop more). I suggest doing this where they periodically spawn in the Caldera or going to the Aionian Campus.Follow the nav marker to the search area—you'll have to open a door in the Aionian Campus entrance courtyard by shooting a yellow shield generator on either side and interacting with the symbol terminal next to it.Head down into the basement with the Imp Swarm and turn around to look through the partially open door with the laser grid. Inside you'll spot the black substance, but you'll need a Relocator to get in.Continue through the basement and out into the next courtyard with the Wyvern—shown in the clip above—and look up to spot a Relocator inside a cage hanging from a crane.Search behind you and to the left to spot a big red drum in the corner and grab Mattermorph inside. Use it on the cage and jump up to grab the Relocator.Fire this through the laser door back in the basement to activate the portal and get inside to search the black substance. If it isn't working, try standing further back.Return to Lodi in the Caldera.Complete a Sieve activity, and Graviton Spike will drop from the chest at the end. You can see when the next Sieve event is occurring via the icon in the centre of the Kepler map and matchmake for it there.

Remember to extract the deepsight from Graviton Spike so you can unlock it as a craftable gun as well.

All Graviton Spike intrinsic upgrades

(Image credit: Bungie)

There are three Temporal Manipulation intrinsic upgrades for Graviton Spike and it doesn't matter which order you grab them in, though you need to use Graviton Spike to complete each. You might have already spotted these strange blue glowing flower pods during the campaign, but just didn't know what to do with them.

Graviton Spike Temporal Manipulation II

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This first intrinsic upgrade is below the Caldera settlement (Image credit: Bungie)Image 2 of 5

Matterspark through the hole into the basement (Image credit: Bungie)Image 3 of 5

Shoot the flower pod with Graviton Spike in arc mode (Image credit: Bungie)Image 4 of 5

Shoot the stasis crystal in stasis mode (Image credit: Bungie)Image 5 of 5

Grab the intrinsic behind the fan now it's stopped moving (Image credit: Bungie)

The first intrinsic to grab is directly below the Aionian settlement in the Caldera. From the altar where you arrive via fast travel:

Take a left at the bottom of the stairs and hug the left wall until you find a Matterspark hole.Travel through this into the room with the flower pod and the fan.Shoot the flower pod with Graviton Spikes' arc mode to open it and then switch to stasis mode to destroy the crystal inside, stopping the fan.Head through the stopped fan and grab the intrinsic upgrade inside.

Graviton Spike Temporal Manipulation III

The second intrinsic is in Exile's Accord (Image credit: Bungie)

The next intrinsic I suggest grabbing is in the Curtilage Divide in Exiles Accord. For this one you should:

Head to Curtilage Divide from the Caldera instead of fast travelling and progress through the area on the main track until you arrive in a very large cavern with multi-level platforms and Fallen structures.You'll spot the flower pod from the central platform—marked on the map above—sticking out of a hut roof.As with the previous, use Graviton Spike's arc mode to open it, then stasis mode to destroy the crystal inside.Now, as in the clip below, turn around, climb to the highest platform and grab Mattermorph from the far side of the room, bringing it back and using it to open the panels on top of the hut.Crawl inside past the now-stopped fan and grab the intrinsic upgrade.

Graviton Spike Temporal Manipulation IV

The final intrinsic is is in The Stellar Sink (Image credit: Bungie)

The last intrinsic upgrade is located in The Stellar Sink, quite close to the big fungal cavern where you fight a boss in the campaign. For this one:

Fast travel to the Assimilated Basement and continue through the area, heading right past the Hydra and jumping into the train portal near the Calculus mission flag.Follow the main path until you reach the big room with the fungal growths and buildings (where you fought that boss previously).Head through the small circular door at the far end, shown in the clip below, jump up onto the rock directly to your right, and then go forward a little way to spot the flower pod, marked on the map above.Same as before, use Graviton Spike arc mode to open the flower, then stasis mode to destroy the crystal.Use Matterspark to roll through the hole next to it and grab the final intrinsic upgrade in the room.

And that's every Graviton Spike intrinsic upgrade. This guide doesn't currently have catalyst details yet, but I'll be sure to add them once I've completed the relevant parts.

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Image quality perception, I've often found, varies massively from person to person. Some can't tell the difference between a game running with DLSS set to Performance and one running at Native, while others can easily ignore the blurriness of a poor TAA implementation while their peers are busy climbing the walls. Intel's new tool, however, attempts to drill down on image quality and provide a quantifiable end result to give game developers a helping hand.

The Computer Graphics Video Quality Metric (CVGM) tool aims to detect and rate distortions introduced by modern rendering techniques and aids, like neural supersampling, path tracing, and variable rate shading, in order to provide a useful evaluation result.

The Intel team took 80 short video sequences depicting a range of visual artifacts introduced by supersampling methods like DLSS, FSR, and XeSS, and various other modern rendering techniques. They then conducted a subjective study with 20 participants, each rating the perceived quality of the videos compared to a reference version.

Distortions shown in the videos include flickering, ghosting, moire patterns, fireflies, and blurry scenes. Oh, and straight up hallucinations, in which a neural model reconstructs visual data in entirely the wrong way.

I'm sure you were waiting for this part: A 3D CNN model (ie, the sort of AI model used in many traditional AI-image enhancement techniques) was then calibrated using the participants' dataset to predict image quality by comparing the reference and distorted videos. The tool then uses the model to detect and rate visual errors, and provides a global quality score along with per-pixel error maps, which highlight artifacts—and even attempts to identify how they may have occurred.

(Image credit: Guerilla)

What you end up with after all those words, according to Intel, is a tool that outperforms all the other current metrics when it comes to predicting how humans will judge visual distortions. Not only does it predict how distracting a human player will find an error, but it also provides easily-interpretable maps to show exactly where it's occurring in a scene. Intel hopes it will be used to optimise quality and performance trade-offs when implementing upscalers, and provide smarter reference generation for training denoising algorithms.

"Whether you’re training neural renderers, evaluating engine updates, or testing new upscaling techniques, having a perceptual metric that aligns with human judgment is a huge advantage", says Intel.

"While [CGVQM's] current reliance on reference videos limits some applications, ongoing work aims to expand CGVQM’s reach by incorporating saliency, motion coherence, and semantic awareness, making it even more robust for real-world scenarios."

Cool. You don't have to look far on the interwebs to find people complaining about visual artifacts introduced by some of these modern image-quality-improving and frame rate-enhancing techniques (this particular sub-Reddit springs to mind). So, anything that allows devs to get a better bead on how distracting they might be seems like progress to me. The tool is now available on GitHub as a PyTorch implementation, so have at it, devs.

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For some people, you can never flex enough when it comes to showing how hard you work. Happily, such corporate apparatchiks can now demonstrate their commitment to the cause while driving a new Mercedes-Benz car. The brand has just announced an update to its support for in-car Teams, enabling live video of you driving along to to be fed to your co-Teams attendees.

For clarity, the reverse does not happen. If the car is moving, the feed from other Teams users is not displayed, with the in-car output then limited to audio.

"With this update, drivers can use the in-car camera while driving, allowing other participants to see them during a meeting. Given the brand’s focus on safety, the use of the camera abides by the laws of each country and has been approved for use on the move.

"To minimise distraction and maximise safety while driving, the meeting video stream turns off automatically as soon as the camera is activated. As a result, the driver will never see any shared screens or slides – and the camera can be turned off at any time," Mercedes says.

Mercedes itself says the driver won't be able to see other meeting attendees, and also claims the focus is on safety. So the assumption is presumably that the driver won't be engage visually with other attendees, look at the camera and so on.

As soon as the car moves, the incoming video feed stops. (Image credit: Mercedes)

With all that in mind, it's hard to imagine what value this feature has other than opening up the possibility for minor-to-major unintended video exposition ranging from nasal exploration to live streaming an accident to work colleagues.

The broader Mercedes Teams app probably is quite handy. According to Mercedes, the updated version, "has a function labelled 'Next Meetings' for upcoming appointments and enables quick access to frequent contacts.

"There’s also an expanded chat function that facilitates reading and writing messages. Integration of voice control for text input and the ability to jump directly from the calendar into a Teams meeting provide a seamless user experience."

So, it's really just the video streaming of a person driving a car that is hard to parse. Anyway, as part of the update, Merc will also be the first car maker to add generative AI via Microsoft 365 Copilot.

"This will be one of the world’s first application of its kind in a car and will help users prepare for upcoming meetings with the aid of advanced AI. Using voice prompts, drivers can summarise emails, retrieve or query client preferences and details, and manage daily tasks without distraction," Mercedes says. And given the impeccable reliability and accuracy record of AI models, I can't possibly imagine what could go wrong in a car-driving context.

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